Friday Facts #427 - Combat Balancing & Space Age LAN

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-427

[Upserter]

Wow, where is that awesome LAN room?

[Akontio]

Although it's nice to see the Pve balance being gauged again- one damage type I didn't see any changes for was fire. No thoughts on flame turrets? Personally, I just plop them down and forget biters even exist until I need to push a nest that's on top of an ore patch

[Jerrybubbles]

Although it's nice to see the Pve balance being gauged again- one damage type I didn't see any changes for was fire. No thoughts on flame turrets? Personally, I just plop them down and forget biters even exist until I need to push a nest that's on top of an ore patch

I can see vulcanus enemies being fireproof, so it shouldn't work everywhere at least

[GregoriusT]

Nice to have the Stone Poop removed, that one was kinda annoying to deal with since that stuff filled up my Inventory automatically whenever i walked or drove over things.

I agree with all the Combat changes EXCEPT the personal Laser Defense which got nerfed too much, because not only did you add Laser Resistance to things, you also divided the PLD by 3, which is accumulating quite the nerfage.

That and it is literally the ONLY weapon that can autofire while on your Person, which with the whole latency hiding supposedly still being dropped the moment you pull out your Gun, is quite the pain. Same for Nonexplosive Spidertron Defenses.

[Terrahertz]

Despite the note at the beginning, this FFF was still longer than a lot of others recently

I never experienced any problems with the rocks, was this really a feature?

Balancing seems mostly fine, does the change to spawners mean that even with the buff to artillery it will now take 2 shots in the endgame to destroy a spawner?

[Kyralessa]

I was a bit taken aback by this, but I guess what you're saying is:

• Destroyed rocks won't drop stone.
• But mined rocks (and deconstructed rocks) still will.

This makes sense in the context of the game, as destroyed trees don't drop wood and destroyed cliffs don't drop anything.

[Akontio]

Although it's nice to see the Pve balance being gauged again- one damage type I didn't see any changes for was fire. No thoughts on flame turrets? Personally, I just plop them down and forget biters even exist until I need to push a nest that's on top of an ore patch

I can see vulcanus enemies being fireproof, so it shouldn't work everywhere at least

Now that you mention it..

[Klonan]

I was a bit taken aback by this, but I guess what you're saying is:

• Destroyed rocks won't drop stone.
• But mined rocks (and deconstructed rocks) still will.

This makes sense in the context of the game, as destroyed trees don't drop wood and destroyed cliffs don't drop anything.

Yes exactly, mining them (by hand or with robots) still gives the stone

[Hopscotch1337]

I am really jelous about this lan party :O

well only 6 weeks left <.<

[GregoriusT]

I was a bit taken aback by this, but I guess what you're saying is:

• Destroyed rocks won't drop stone.
• But mined rocks (and deconstructed rocks) still will.

This makes sense in the context of the game, as destroyed trees don't drop wood and destroyed cliffs don't drop anything.

Yes exactly, mining them (by hand or with robots) still gives the stone

Perfect, then i wont need to worry about Nukes making Rocks drop! xD

[Tertius]

I can see vulcanus enemies being fireproof, so it shouldn't work everywhere at least

I hope we get water turrets and see our enemies petrify, then explode as in Trollhunter.

[TRUEpiiiicness]

well only 6 weeks left <.<

Really?? That's gone quite fast for me

[Alice3173]

Can't say I'm a fan of the personal laser defenses getting nerfed so badly. Not only are they a whopping 1/3rd as powerful but nests have inflated health and worms have increased laser resistance. Kind of sounds like they've been nerfed into near-uselessness when a better course of action would be to make them more difficult or expensive to craft and then change their size in the equipment grid by like a tile in one direction.

A good rule of thumb for stuff like this is to nerf damage numbers as a last resort and instead try alternative methods to balance things and/or make other combat methods more appealing. The boost to the combat bots, for example, makes them more appealing than they used to be.

[Drury]

It was about time Destroyers lived up to their name, good stuff.

That and a shotgun buff, chef's kiss.

[Grillmax]

I still wish we will get a grenade launcher instead of hand thrown grenades.

Additionally, i do hope Wube includes shotgun shells as a valid ammo type for gun turrets, producing red ammo for science and defense is nice but a choice would be preferable. especially with inserter filters being intrinsic now, having two types of ammo on a belt is less of a nightmare to manage.

Imagine a line of shotgun turrets for heavy upfront damage and rifle turrets for cleanup fed from the same belt

[gnutrino]

Does the spawner health buff apply to existing spawners or only when new ones are generated? Particularly thinking about if you have biter expansion turned off then AFAIK the only time new spawners are created is when a chunk is generated so if you explore a lot early on you may not have to deal with buffed spawners for the rest of the game if it doesn't apply retroactively.

Also does this buff apply to pentapod egg rafts and whatever other enemy spawners may be on the other planets or is it a Nauvis only feature? And will mods be able to change the buff curve?

[TheoMarque]

If you not want care about repetitive combats - PLD is just for stay safe. Without? I Just turn off biters and other enemies due I am not a fan a large part of military in automation games. The same thing o in Dyson Sphere - when they add combat I just stop playing it.

PLD is not a problem with high DMG but power consuming, consume too small amount of power and without any way to replace used batteries in armor - we are lost. So, add replaceable batteries in armor and charging station and make them as ammo slot and PLD for consistency.

[GregoriusT]

Does the spawner health buff apply to existing spawners or only when new ones are generated? Particularly thinking about if you have biter expansion turned off then AFAIK the only time new spawners are created is when a chunk is generated so if you explore a lot early on you may not have to deal with buffed spawners for the rest of the game if it doesn't apply retroactively.

Also does this buff apply to pentapod egg rafts and whatever other enemy spawners may be on the other planets or is it a Nauvis only feature? And will mods be able to change the buff curve?

The way the Tooltip looks like it does apply retroactively, so we wont have the "Behemoth Spawners" at Worldgen, which I kindof wish they went for instead of scaling Health.

[GregoriusT]

Speaking of Combat, I really wish Spidertron could do more than just Rockets.

A Machine Gun Spidertron would be neat (I know there is a Mod for that, I used it in the past).

Or simply being able to equip weapons to Spidertron, like a Flamethrower or if you really wanna be funny, Shotguns!



(random note to devs: I hope you also buffed the piercing shotgun ammo, not that that has been forgotten about lol)

Edit: I kinda expected someone else to post something inbetween, oops.